Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

FORT COLLINS — The defense and prosecution of Fort Collins police Lt. Jim Broderick is being hampered by a state grand jury investigation of the murder case Broderick was trying to solve.

Broderick's attorney and a special prosecutor for Weld County told a judge Wednesday that they need to review exhibits and evidence used in the original murder trial of Tim Masters.

But so far, the state attorney general's office is holding onto the material, saying it is needed in a grand jury investigation of the 1987 slaying of Peggy Hettrick.

That is becoming a problem for both Patrick Tooley, Broderick's defense lawyer, and Weld County prosecutor Michael Roark.

"If I'm going to mount an effective defense of Mr. Broderick, I need to know what they (the attorney general's office) took out of this courthouse," Tooley said.

Masters was accused of murdering Hettrick and was convicted in 1999. But his conviction was overturned in 2008 after DNA testing pointed to another person.

Broderick was the lead investigator in the Hettrick probe and is now facing seven counts of felony perjury on allegations of lying and concealing evidence at the 1999 trial.

The Colorado attorney general's office took over the investigation into Hettrick's death, and much of the evidence in the original case was turned over to state investigators. But Tooley and Roark say they can't get access to the evidence for the ongoing case against Broderick because the attorney general is citing secrecy concerns surrounding the grand jury investigation.

"We and the prosecution in this case will disagree about a lot of things," Tooley said. "But this is not one of them."